MEMO

TO: app developers considering and other related apps and interfaces

Perhaps spend a day or two to add Micropub support to the platform first, then your app could potentially be used to publish to ANY website/platform that supports the W3C spec.

🎧 The Modern Golden Age Podcast Episode #16: Bryan Kam

Listened to The Modern Golden Age Podcast Episode #16: Bryan Kam by João Mateus from The Modern Golden Age Podcast

This week, I show you my conversation with Bryan, a philosopher, writer, and researcher. He's a very thoughtful individual, with a fascinating mind. We talked about his work, writing, music, and much more.

  • 00:00 ~ Introduction
  • 01:10 ~ Thomas Khun
  • 05:55 ~ Bryan's relationship with ideas
  • 11:02 ~ Note-taking
  • 17:20 ~ Health model of Inquiry
  • 20:41 ~ Bryan's current questions
  • 26:00 ~ Meditation
  • 33:00 ~ Change and Modern Golden Age
  • 42:15 ~ Speaking, writing and thinking
  • 50:43 ~ Original Sources and influences
  • 55:20 ~ Intellectual and creative Humility
  • 1:06:03 ~ Classical composers and jazz musicians
  • 1:08:30 ~ Types of writing
  • 1:10:00 ~ Practices in MGA
  • 1:18:00 ~ The kind of person that allows for an MGA
  • 1:21:00 ~ Values in a Modern Golden Age
  • 1:23:12 ~ Where can you find Bryan?
There’s some interesting space to explore with respect to music composing, creation, and playing with respect to jazz and “conversation” that relates to orality and literacy here, but they miss that piece broadly. The classical music portion was missing some context as much classical music is like certain forms of poetry which have highly structural elements within which one must stay while being expressive, while improvisational jazz is like free verse.

The “monastery” to “metropolis” discussion of the development and nurturing of an idea is an interesting analogy for pedagogy and learning as well as scaffolding. Having a supportive environment with trust is similar to most learning environments and particularly a difficult one for second language learners to find as the paradigm changes based on age.

I wish there had been more improvisation here with respect to the conversational portions, but instead the interviewer kept going back to a script of pre-formed questions instead of exploring the ideas as they came. I was surprised to see references to David Krakauer and Stefan Zweig pop up here.

Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one’s own words as a means of improving one’s understanding. It’s a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.

Drinking game using the phrase: “I do believe.” 😅

Rating: 2 of 5; this was in my wheelhouse, but provided no real insight for me. Unlikely to listen to others in this series.

🎧Episode 539: Frustrated On Your Behalf | Core Intuition

Listened to Episode 539: Frustrated On Your Behalf by Manton Reece and Daniel Jalkut from Core Intuition

Manton and Daniel talk about payments from the Small App Developer settlement against Apple. Why does Manton refuse to accept free money, and are there valid reasons to opt out of the settlement? Then they reflect on the wave of opportunity from Twitter’s drastic downfall, and whether Manton and Daniel can “catch it”. Finally, Manton remembers the IndieWeb principles about plurality and monoculture, and they discuss how that might relate to Mastodon.

This I’m recommending:

And all three for their kindness and thoughtfulness in technology spaces.

Perhaps hidden/unknown to many, but hcommons.social and other instances running the Hometown version of Mastodon, have the ability to post only to their local community and specifically not federate their content to the broader Fediverse. In the posting interface, click on the link icon and choose whether you want to allow your post greater reach or stay only within your community. This can be a helpful affordance for having smaller/restricted conversations.

User interface from hcommons.social highlighting the fifth icon, a link, with a drop down menu to choose either federating one's post or making it local only.

@jimgroom I’ve not seen the admin UI, but is there a toggle for what appears on the /explore page of an instance? I notice that some smaller instances have pages of people to check out (opted in by each user in the settings), eg: https://hcommons.social/explore. Did social.ds106.us specifically opt out of this for its instance?
Wonder what I’m reading? Here’s my own following list:
https://boffosocko.com/about/following/

A central list I control with associated RSS feeds & OPML files makes it portable for use in various kinds of feed/social readers.